Wednesday, December 12, 2012

I take Metro often to hockey games downtown, and while the NHL has been locked out, there was a special AHL exhibition the other evening between the Hershey Bears and the Norfolk Admirals at Verizon Center.

After the game, the exit crowd was taking the second of three refurbished units down toward the platform at Gallery Place. The escalator suddenly stopped, thankfully to design this time, but at the landing there was a misaligned jumble of stairs not unlike what we've seen in Metro incidents before. I'm thankful it was not worse.

The first stair at the comb plate was angled downward about 20 degrees
or so, so that the rear of the step was punched up at that angle - and
the second had seemed to impact lesser beyond that maybe half the
inclination - the one or two steps on the flat landing area after that
were appropriately flat and aligned.

Given that these escalators at Gallery Place were refurbished less than two years ago, I find this a frightening lapse of maintenance and yet another example of Metro incompetence with regards to escalators.

I apologize for the lack of pictures, but I wanted to get away from the machine as quickly as possible.

From Scott:

Wanted to alert you and your readers to an escalator situation at King Street station. I was on the escalator (with about 20-25 others) when the unit abruptly jolted to a halt that caused riders near the bottom end to trip over what appeared to be components of the escalator on the ground nearby.

The passengers were startled but thankfully, there were no injuries. The station manager seemed surprised as well, and immediately cordoned off the escalator.

We need YOU!

Our best posts are from you!

Over 700,000 of you take Metro every day. Whether it's a simple tweet from the front lines, a funny photo or story or something more substantial, tell us. Got an idea of something we should do? Let us know. More than half of this blog has been written by riders just like you.